


Those Cheerleaders Are Smokin'

by whereareyoucas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Football, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Cheerleaders, F/F, Jock Dean, M/M, but he's also a dork, cas is... stab happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-14 07:46:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2183643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereareyoucas/pseuds/whereareyoucas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dragons, footballers, cheerleaders, quests and slumber parties. What more could you want?</p><p>Castiel moves to a high school with vengeance on his mind, where he gains some unlikely friends, gets in a a lot of trouble, and of course, meets Dean Winchester, quarterback of the school football team.<br/>A/N Ok so I am a bit rubbish at summaries oops but there's cheerleaders and mythology and bake sales and a story about friendship, betrayal and love.</p><p>Warning: Contains an ickle bit of violence and some swearing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions, a pervert and The Plan

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'd like to thank Not_Of_Import for being awesome and beta'ing this and J1mmyNovak for coming up with the title ha. Enjoy.

A semi-concerned murmuring filled the hall as Principal Sandover made his way to the stage. An emergency school assembly had been called. This routine was familiar to the older students of Sir Peter Nugent High. For the oldest year this would be the third time an emergency assembly had been arranged, all for the same reason:

“Unfortunately, a student of ours has tragically lost their life,” Sandover began. “Hael White’s body was found in the forest this morning. She was most likely caught in a forest fire, and couldn’t escape in time.”

Near the back of the hall, Dean Winchester leaned forward to murmur to his brother.

“That’s a lot of dead girls for one high school.”

 

*-*-*

 

“And lastly, you may have noticed that we have a new student. _Casteel_ Novak has joined us, so please make him feel welcome,” finished the teacher.

“It’s pronounced Cast _iel_ ,” the boy replied quietly, taking a seat at the front of the classroom. The kid he was sat next to didn’t give him a second glance.

From the other side of the classroom, Dean felt sorry for the new guy, like he felt sorry for every new guy, because it sucks being the new guy. Especially this new guy, having to sit next to probably the most boring and unfriendly student in the whole school. Bad luck. That was all he thought about Castiel, until he came up to him and Sam at lunch time.

“Hello, I’m Castiel, I think you’re in my chem class?” the boy ventured unsurely, looking at Dean. “I was wondering if I could sit with you because I don’t know anyone else apart from that boy that I sat next to in class, who wouldn’t even tell me his name.”

“Yeah sure, have a seat, I’m Dean, and this is my brother Sam.” Dean introduced, Sam making room for the new guy. “Oh and don’t worry about that, even the teacher doesn’t know his name, so we just refer to him as the Golem. I don’t think he likes mixing with humans,” Dean joked.

Cas sat down and the three boys began a typical new guy conversation- asking where he’s from, why he moved, shit like that. Then it came up that Dean was on the school football team, the Sir Peter Nugent Leviathans. Cas leaned forward eagerly.

“You’re on the team?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d love to see you play some time.”

Dean exchanged a glance with his brother, Sam raising his eyebrows a micro fraction. In sibling code, Sam had just said ‘I think you just scored with the new guy’. Dean agreed.

“When’s your next free?” Dean asked, flashing a dazzling smile.

“Next.”

“Great, do you wanna come watch us practice? I think the cheer squad will be practicing too,” Dean added as an afterthought.

“The cheer squad?” Cas repeated.

“The cheer squad.”

“You’ll love the cheer squad, Cas, they’re the best thing about this school,” Sam said, Cas’ eyebrows furrowing in response.

“Keep it in your pants dude,” Dean scoffed. “Just ‘cause you have the hots for Ruby.”

Sam rolled his eyes and continued talking to Cas.

“The cheer squad is like the best in the state, best in the country even.”

“The football team’s pretty good too, y’know,” Dean pointed out sullenly.

After ten minutes of Sam and Dean squabbling, and Cas trying not to take sides, the bell rang and Cas and Dean made their way towards the pitch. Dean instructed Cas to go sit in the front of the old bleachers, and that he’d come chat to him when they have a break. When Dean came out the changing room, he looked to see which seat Cas had taken. His shoulders drooped slightly in dismay. Cas was intently watching the cheer leaders who’d already started practice. Hell, he even had a video camera out and was filming them. Maybe he hadn’t scored with the new guy, Dean thought to himself. And maybe it was a good thing, because he sure wouldn’t appreciate being filmed like that; Cas kind of looked like a creep.

Nevertheless, when the break came, Dean felt obligated to go chat with Cas. He might even have a non-creepy excuse for the video camera. However, when Dean got to the stands, Cas had gone. He looked around bewilderedly and then shrugged it off. He got the message. But on his way to get a drink, he heard some disgusted screams coming from the girls changing rooms, and jogged over like some of the other guys were doing.

Coach Abaddon was holding Cas by the scruff of his neck.

“How dare you watch my girls getting changed, you little pervert. If I ever find you near the changing rooms again I will tear your skin off, slowly and painfully. And I don’t want you filming the practice again. You’re creepy and gross. Now get out of my sight,” Abaddon finished, letting go of Cas, who looked very nervous.

The small crowd that had accumulated around the scene dispersed quickly, not wanting to get in the way of Coach Abaddon, who scared everyone excusing her own cheer squad. Dean followed the other guys, not wanting anyone to know that it had been him to take Cas to the practice.

“What a fucking creep,” the guy next to Dean was saying, but he wasn’t really listening. Cas had seemed so normal throughout lunch, he’d made conversation, asked questions, even laughed at Dean’s lame jokes. He didn’t _seem_ like a damn pervert. Something felt wrong. But maybe all perverts could come off as normal people. That thought weirded Dean out and he started thinking about all the people he knew that could secretly be perverts. He kind of forgot about Cas until the end of the day, when he ran up to the Impala where Dean was waiting for Sam.

“Oh. Hi, Cas,” Dean said, looking around and hoping no one could see him talking to ‘the pervert’. News spread fast and now most of the school had heard about the incident and Dean really didn’t want people to know he knew him.

“Dean, I know you think I’m a massive pervert, so does everyone else, but I swear, I’m not,” Cas said kind of desperately. His cheeks were slightly flushed and his clothes were much more scuffed and dirty than they had been this morning. It looked like he’d been pushed over. A lot. Cas looked at Dean pathetically, all big blue eyes and scruffy hair. Dean was silent for a few seconds, but then he relented. This guy just didn’t look like a pervert and, call him gullible, but he wanted to believe him. Plus the thought that supposedly normal people could suddenly be perverts scared him, and he wanted to prove it untrue, wanted to believe the best in people.

“Okay then, let’s say you were telling the truth. Why were you trying to watch the girls get changed?”

“I can’t tell you.” Dean threw his arms up in exasperation.

“That’s exactly what a pervert would say!”

Cas rolled his eyes, and looked away. “Can’t you just trust me?” he asked.

“I’d like to, but ‘fraid not, pal. Look if you’re a pervert, I don’t think I can hang out with you. You understand it’s damaging for my reputation, and-“

“I’m not a pervert!” Cas said exasperatedly.

Dean waited for him to explain himself, but when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to, he turned away to get into his car. Cas was acting way too suspicious _not_ to be a pervert now. However, before Dean could get the door to open, Cas’ hand stopped him.

“No, wait,” Cas sighed, seeming to give up. “I was going to need help for this anyway. I’ll tell you why I was filming them.” Again, Dean waited for Cas to go on, but he didn’t. Dean tipped his head, urging Cas to speak. “I can’t tell you here,” Cas said as if that was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “It’s too dangerous.”

That really piqued Dean’s interest. Maybe Cas was like a secret agent or something, FBI, maybe a spy? Or maybe Cas was just crazy as well as a pervert. Dean, being the good guy he was, decided to give Cas the benefit of the doubt and trust his instincts that told him Cas was alright.

“Fine. Meet me at the Biggersons on Main Street at around six.”

“Biggersons?” Cas raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, crowded and public just in case you try anything, I’m not dumb y’know.”

 

*-*-*

 

“Well this is classy,” Cas commented, sitting opposite Dean in the small restaurant.

“Enough with the sarcasm, time to convince me that you’re not a pervert,” Dean said, eyeing up the poster advertising ‘The Turducken’.

“Hael was my cousin.”

Dean stiffened. “Hael White? The girl that died?”

“Yes.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.” _Shit._

Cas nodded in acknowledgement and continued. “She moved here around two months ago from Illinois, our home town. When we were children, we used to send letters to each other all the time and we never really stopped. So, when she moved, she would send me a letter every week or so to tell me how school was going. One week, her letter was short and... strange. The paper was blotchy as if she’d been crying. It said something about the cheerleaders not being human, and that she was in danger. She asked for my help. I assumed that it was a practical joke, or something along those lines.” Cas paused for several seconds while Dean remained very quiet. After casting his eyes down to the table, Cas continued, his voice slightly lower.

“After she died, I researched the school. There’s an unusually high amount of student deaths, a lot of them being girls. A large amount of them would have something to do with the cheerleading squad. I found this strange, obviously, and furthered my research until I found a scan of an old conspiracy magazine published in Kansas in the nineties. There was a small article saying that the cheerleaders had superhuman strength, and that they were evil. That was enough to make me move here, so I could investigate more.” Castiel finished, carefully looking at his hands.

Dean didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he _could_ say. He couldn’t tell Cas the truth, but he definitely didn’t want to lie to him about his own cousin’s demise.

With his countenance arranged to an adequate level of sorrow, Dean worked out a quick plan in his head. _Feign ignorance, but lead him in the right direction. It’s the only moral thing to do._

Lucky Dean was almost as great a ~~liar~~ _actor_ as he was a footballer.

“That is some spooky shit, man. But... Look, I am truly sorry about your cousin, but don’t you think you’re freaking out a little? I mean a lot of that stuff could be coincidences or just plain bull.”

Anyone else would’ve assumed Cas was crazy from grief and guilt. Dean could probably play to that a bit, but he’d be careful not to send him toppling over the edge. Shit this was tricky. He was going to an awful lot of moral trouble just for a new guy. But for some inexplicable reason, he liked Cas, and wanted to help him.

“No, Dean, you don’t understand, I have proof,” Cas said, and he scrabbled to get the video camera out his bag. Dean watched, brow furrowed with well measured doubt. Cas held out the camera across the table, and showed Dean a series of blurry screen shots. There was one of Coach Abaddon with what looked like a forked tongue, but that was most probably just a shadow. Another one was of a girl called Anna, with what looked like a shadow of wings. But again, it could easily just have been a trick of the light. Then finally, a screen shot of Charlie with a reddish glowing eyes. Just the light reflecting off them.

Dean expressed his doubts to an evermore frustrated Cas.

“I’m sorry, Cas. I mean, yeah your screenshots are kind of creepy but they’re not unexplainable.”

Cas shook his head dolefully. _Okay Dean, time to offer the figurative olive branch._

“Okay,” Dean sighed, “say I’d help you. I’d still be sceptical, but I’d help you. What would The Plan be?” Cas’ eyes lit up slightly.

“We want to find out what these things want, what these things are, and why they’re here. So The Plan is to get close to one of them and get the information out of them.”

“Genius,” Dean quipped. “When you say get the information out of them, you do mean in a friendly, non-hurty way, right?”

“Of course,” Cas replied nonchalantly.

“Well in that case, consider Step One of The Plan done. I’m friends with some of the squad already. I’ll introduce you to one of them.”

“Thank you Dean. Your cooperation is much appreciated,” Cas relaxed slightly.

“You’re like a kind of spy,” Dean mumbled. “You know, I hope people will forget about what happened with you today, or school is gonna be torment for you,” Dean successfully changed the topic of conversation to something a bit lighter, if only a little bit. They ordered fries and chatted for a while, then bid each other good night. A small part of Dean wondered if they could technically call that a date, but then mentally reprimanded himself not to come onto grieving new guy that he was manipulating… Even if he was hot.


	2. Daggers, football and a house party

Step Two of The Plan was a go. Cas told Dean to stop talking like he was James Bond. Cas had told Dean not to tell Charlie what Cas knew, and to just let him do his thing. So now Dean, Cas and Charlie were sat in the former’s sitting room.

“So you’re the pervert,” Charlie started, with a concerned look adorned on her face.

“No,” Cas said.

“What’s your excuse for peering into the changing rooms with your video camera then? You want to document different kinds of windows and discuss how windowy they are?” Charlie suggested without venom. Dean had assured her that Cas wasn’t a creep, maybe weird, but not a creep, and Charlie trusted Dean.

“No,” Cas repeated.

There was an awkward silence.

“Soooo, I’m gonna go fetch us some drinks, and you two can get to know each other a bit,” Dean announced. As he passed by Charlie, she raised her eyebrows at him desperately, not wanting to be left in this awkward situation.

“He’s the new guy, he needs some friends,” Dean mumbled to her, and he left, leaving Charlie alone with Cas. Charlie smiled politely at him.

When Dean had almost finished pouring the drinks, he heard a crash and some shouting. He ran into the sitting room to see Cas on top of Charlie brandishing a small dagger in one hand, and a vial of clear liquid in the other. A chair had been knocked over and Charlie was struggling under the weight of the boy. Dean watched as Cas dribbled some of the liquid onto Charlie’s face, which started sizzling, and she cried out in pain. Cas’ fresh wave of shouting was cut off by Dean knocking him unconscious with a ceramic hippopotamus to the head.

Around half an hour later, Cas woke up. He was on the couch, with cushions propped under his head, and Dean and Charlie watching him intently. He realised he was weaponless, and that he was cornered.

“Oh God,” he choked out, “you’re gonna kill me. Just please-“

“ _What_?” Dean spluttered, cutting him off.

Cas squinted. “You’re-you’re not going to kill me?”

“No!?” Dean spluttered again, looking utterly bewildered. This was very secret agent like behaviour for a guy that insisted he wasn’t a secret agent. God, he hoped he wasn’t a secret agent.

“Then why did you knock me out?” Cas asked, calming down, but only a fraction.

“Because I thought you were going to kill Charlie!” he exclaimed.

“Oh.” Then Cas straightened a bit to look at Charlie, his eyes turned cold, and his voice adopted a dangerous tone. “You are a demon. You killed Hael.”

Realisation dawned on Charlie who had been quiet so far. “This is about Hael? Why the hell didn’t you tell me Dean?” she turned, punching Dean for being so stupid. He shielded himself pathetically.

“Cas told me not to! And this was so not The Plan. He said he was just gonna ask you some questions, in a peaceful way,” Dean insisted, glaring at Cas, who glared fiercely back. Dean looked away quickly, not being able to stand the look of betrayal in Cas’ eyes. Charlie turned her gaze to Cas, and her voice adopted a soft tone.

“Was Hael your friend?”

“And my cousin,” Cas spat.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want an apology from her murderer,” Cas growled. If he had had his dagger still, he would be so stab-happy right now.

“Ok. You need to stop looking at me like that, it’s kind of scary. I did not murder her, she died in a fire,” Charlie affirmed.

“Spare the bullshit, demon.”

Charlie breathed deeply through her nose, and looked like she’d made a decision.

“Okay, I’m really not supposed to tell you this, but I guess I kind of have to now, or you’d try kill me or something crazy. Plus, Dean would probably have blabbed it to you sooner or later,” she shot an accusatory glance at Dean, only slightly less fierce than Cas’ accusatory glance. God, Dean’s plans sucked ass. Although it seemed to be working: he hadn’t had to go back on his own oath of secrecy, and Cas would still find out the truth about Hael.

“Please, be understanding Castiel.”

Cas didn’t nod his head or anything, just waited for Charlie to start talking.

“So firstly, not a demon. I’m a dragon. The whole cheer squad are dragons.”

Cas was about to interrupt, maybe with a sound of disbelief, or anger, so Charlie continued quickly.

“But we’re also just people too. Kind of,” she said tilting her head. “We go out on dangerous quests sometimes. We were out in the forest, on one of these quests, when Hael followed us. There was some fighting, some fireballs, and we didn’t know Hael was there. She got hit. It was a terrible accident, and I am so sorry for your loss,” Charlie said earnestly. Cas’ aggressiveness had become more subdued while Charlie was talking about Hael and now he spoke in an even voice, though it still hid a lot of pain and anger.

“Why did she tell me you threatened her?”

“We warned her about following us, we told her it was dangerous. She wouldn’t listen.” The atmosphere in the room was mournful now, as the discussion brought back painful memories of the girl that lost her life.

“But Hael…” Cas couldn’t finish. He didn’t want to believe this, but it was making sense so far.

“Look, Castiel, I know it’s easy to be angry and vengeful but this was truly a tragic accident. There’s no one to blame anymore, so you’re going to have to let that go. Just remember that Hael lead a good life and was loved by many people,” Charlie consoled.

Cas nodded without saying anything. His eyes glistened slightly.

“It’s not just Hael though, is it?” Cas begun again, after finding his voice, still a hint of defiance behind his words. “There have been other deaths in the school. You’re obviously too dangerous to be around humans.”

“If you look at the statistics for ‘accidental’ deaths in the whole town, it’s actually below average. The dragons protect the town: we’re powerful, and we fight evil. We’ve been around longer than humans, this is just the way things work. If you can’t handle that, you’ll just have to leave town. I’m sorry.”

Cas was quiet for a moment, as he tried to fight the heat behind his eyes.

“And you knew all of this, Dean?” he asked, once he was sure his voice wouldn’t break.

“Yeah. I’m so sorry. I made a really bad judgement call. I’m not allowed to tell anyone about the dragons but I wanted you to find out, for Hael’s sake, which is why I went along with The Plan. I didn’t think it would turn out like this,” Dean winced, rubbing his eyes. Stupid Dean.

“Are you ok?” he asked Cas, who was still quiet.

“Yes.”

“Do you wanna be alone?”

“Yes.”

Dean and Charlie obliged, and left Cas in the living room to his own thoughts.

“Are you sure he doesn’t have concussion or something?” Dean fretted to Charlie once they were out of ear shot in the kitchen.

“I’m sure. He just needs some time to think about things, think about Hael,” Charlie said reasonably. This was not the first time she had to console a person in mourning unfortunately.

“How long do you think that’ll take?” Dean asked. Charlie raised her eyebrows. “Not being insensitive or anything, I’m just wondering.”

“I don’t know. It’s different for everybody. He’s already had a month to deal with her death, so maybe it won’t be too long.”

“He has to deal with a pretty heavy guilt trip too though; I think he kind of blames himself for Hael.”

“Maybe he understands that there was nothing he could’ve done.”

Charlie and Dean stood quietly in the kitchen for around forty minutes, when they heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

“Hello,” Cas greeted, shuffling into the kitchen.

“How are you feeling?” Charlie asked.

“Better, thank you. I’m sorry I attacked you,” Cas said, looking at Charlie.

“I totally understand. I’d probably have attacked me too,” Charlie said, with a careful measure of cheerfulness.

“Are you gonna leave town?” Dean piped up suddenly, watching Cas.

“I... don’t know. If I leave, I won’t be known as ‘the pervert’ to my peers anymore,” Cas reasoned.

“But if you stay, you can convince everyone you’re not a pervert.” Cas looked at Dean doubtfully. “You should stay, Cas. The cheerleaders are ok, really. Plus they put on such a great show, they’re amazing. They’re worth staying for! I swear, like, half the crowd at games are there just for the cheerleaders dude- _Shut up, Charlie-_ and they throw the most awesome after-parties. Just come see the game for yourself on Saturday, it will definitely convince you to stay.”

“Why do you want me to stay? Since I’ve been here, I’ve attacked your friend and alienated basically the whole school.”

“Are you really gonna make me say it, Cas?” Dean looked at him. Cas’ brow furrowed in confusion. Charlie smirked because she was about to witness Dean Winchester spelling out his emotions which was a rare occasion. “I think you’re cool, I like your company. I like you... your company.” Dean said quickly.

“Oh.” It looked like Cas had missed Dean’s not-so-subtle message saying ‘I have the hots for you’. Dean didn’t know whether he was glad about that or not. “I’ve already seen the game though?” Cas retorted.

“No way man, all you saw was a practice.” “I’ve seen videos of the cheerleaders on YouTube.”

“Cas, you don’t understand! The show is so, so awesome, and you can’t get the same effect from a video! I’ll get you some great seats, you can sit with Sam, it is so awesome trust me, it will blow your freaking mind!” Dean said exuberantly, making Charlie chuckle and Cas’ lips twitch in amusement.

“Calm down, you raving fan boy.” Charlie laughed. “But it’s true, we’re awesome.”

Cas sighed resignedly. “Ok.”

That meant he was going to stay. This made Dean inexplicably happy.

 

*-*-*

 

It was Saturday, the night of the game. Cas had managed to go through out the rest of the week without harassing anyone, and now he and Sam were sat in the front of the stands with oversized cartons of cola, and suspicious looking hot dogs.

“You’re not gonna get your camera out again are you? ‘Cause if you are, I might sit somewhere else,” Sam said, only half joking.

“No, don’t worry. I’m here to soak in the atmosphere or something along those lines.”

“Awesome. You’re gonna love it.”

“Everyone’s been saying that, so now I have very high expectation which will be hard to-“

Cas was cut off by loud music. Not just loud music, dominating music, the kind of music where you can’t hear anything else and you just have to let it take you over. The game was introduced in a booming voice. Cas briefly wondered how expensive the sound system was. Then, on the dark pitch, fake smoke unfurled across it, blanketing the field silently. The sight was spooky, but epic. Epic like this was the setting up of some awe-inspiring show, epic like the hairs on your arms standing up on end. The scoreboards lit up in some complicated lightshows as the cheerleaders came onto the pitch, in their signature red uniforms. The crowd exploded, and the cheerleaders hadn’t even started yet.

The game went by fast. It was magnificent, glorious, all the synonyms of awesome. It was better than Cas imagined. Although he did think that was a lot due to the expensive lighting system and the music. But the atmosphere and the crowd and the cheering really were something. When Dean’s team won, there were even a couple of fireworks, which got Cas cheering, despite him not being a very cheery-kind of guy.

Soon, Cas found himself at one of the cheerleader’s houses – Anna’s, he thought - with Dean for the after-party. They had dropped Sam at home then came straight here. It was mostly cheerleaders and footballers here, with a few friends of the team. Cas stopped before the door, and tugged Dean back nervously.

“What?” Dean said pulling back to talk to Cas. He shifted uncomfortably. “Is this ‘cause you’re still suspicious about the dragons?”

“No of course not, I just… I don’t know any of these people, and I’m not the most charismatic and socially developed person in the world,” Cas admitted.

“Ohhh, I understand. It’s alright, I’ll introduce you to some of them so it won’t be a room full of strangers. And if you want to go home at any time, just tell me.”

“Thank you Dean, that’s very reassuring. The dragons know I know, right?”

“Yeah and they’re cool with it, Charlie explained the situation. Except I heard Coach Abaddon was pissed. I don’t think she likes you. She’s not here though, that would be weird,” Dean rambled.

“And they’re not angry at me for attacking her?”

“Nope, they’re cool with it. They’re cool people, you don’t need to worry.”

“Okay, good. And you won’t abandon me?”

“Not unless you want me to,” Dean smirked, holding the door open for Cas. The two of them stepped inside the warm house and Dean began leading Cas around, telling him people’s names. He introduced him to a couple of his team mates, including Kevin and Samandriel, and then to a few of the cheerleaders. Cas seemed very aware that he was speaking to dragons.

“You already know Charlie, and that’s Pamela-“

“Hey sweet cheeks,” Pamela winked, Cas smiling politely back.

“And this is Anna,” Dean introduced finally.

“Hello, I’m-“

“Castiel, I’ve heard of you,” Anna smiled.

“I’m not a pervert.” Cas had become accustomed to insisting he wasn’t a pervert when he was introduced to new people.

“Good to know.”

Just then a blonde girl kind of ran into Anna, seemingly from nowhere, and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Castiel, Jo, Jo Castiel,” Anna introduced, wrapping an arm around Jo.

“Nice to meet you,” Cas greeted. There was no way he was going to remember everyone’s names after tonight.

“So you’re the pervert,” Jo began, but when Anna shot a glare at her, corrected herself.

From another room, a deep voice yelled at Dean to get his ass in there. Dean looked at Cas.

“You coming?” Dean asked.

“No, I think I’ll stay here with Anna and Jo,” Cas said. He didn’t want Dean to feel like he was a puppy dog following him around everywhere. It was very kind of him to understand Cas’ shyness at first, but now he’d been introduced to everyone, he felt he should be able to roam the party by himself.

“Ok, I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Dean smiled, leaving Cas with the girls.

Cas turned back to see Anna and Jo share a quick kiss.

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave you two alone,” Cas started, making his way out, but Anna stopped him.

“No, please stay, where are you from Cas?”

The three of them talked for a while, and Cas found he really liked them, especially Anna, with whom he seemed to click with easily. After a bit, Dean came back, and Anna said she’d see Cas round. Dean looked relieved that Cas had actually made some friends. Dean and Cas left to go back to the main room where most of the other people were. Cas spotted a girl called Hannah, and realised he knew her. She had been a friend of Hael’s- he’d met her when he was visiting a couple of times. He decided to go over and talk to her, leaving Dean on his own. He slunk back to find Anna and Jo again. He entered the room without knocking.

“Jeez, Dean, can’t you see I’m trying to seduce a lady here!? What do you want?” Jo yelled, reluctantly sitting back from kissing Anna.

“Shut up, did Cas say anything about me?” Dean replied easily.

“Ohhh, you have _another_ crush?” Anna said.

“Pfft, what do you mean _another_ crush, shut your mouth, do you think he likes me?” Dean asked, dropping himself to sit between Anna and Jo. Anna smirked, and Jo rolled her eyes, but they both sat back with Dean anyway. Dean had decided a while ago that Anna and Jo were the best people to go to for advice on gay crushes because _hello,_ they were gay as shit, and also on girl crushes because yep, they were girls. Perfect. They also seemed to be more intuitive with people than Dean.

“Well?” Dean asked again impatiently.

“No one would like you Dean ‘cause you’re a whiny bitch,” Jo retorted, smiling. “Helpful,” Dean retorted sarcastically.

“I think he has the potential to like you. But maybe you need to allow him time to settle in a bit more? He’s still kind of new and nervous I think,” Anna said thoughtfully. Dean nodded.

“Does he even know you’re bi? ‘Cause if he doesn’t, you should send him some signals. You should go and suck his dick or something subtle like that,” Jo added.

“Again, helpful.”

“But you can’t come on too strong, you don’t want to scare him off-“ Anna began.

“But you can’t be too subtle or-“

“Ok, stop, just let Dean Winchester work his magic,” Dean announced, deciding that Anna and Jo had reached their limit of helpful advice for the night and getting up.

“Break a leg,” Jo yelled jovially after him.

Dean wandered downstairs and found Cas on the couch, just people watching.

“Hey, you okay?” Dean asked, settling next to him.

“Yep.”

Dean tested Cas on the names of the people around them, filling in the blanks.

“Lisa, not Laura,” Dean corrected him. “Used to date her,” he added nonchalantly.

“Congratulations. And that’s Samandriel,” Cas said, pointing to another person.

“Yep. Still can’t believe you prefer to remember the name Samandriel to ‘Alfie’. I guess weird named people gotta stick together.”

Cas ignored Dean’s quip and continued. “That’s Benny.”

“Yep. Used to date him.”

A few seconds pause. “Congratulations,” Cas replied in a more thoughtful voice. That was all that needed to be said for now.

Suddenly there was the sound of screaming and glass breaking and girls laughing from the back of the house.

“It’s happening,” Cas half murmured as if he was talking to himself, and then ran to the source of the commotion, Dean in hot pursuit. Cas had his hand on his dagger by the time he got out the back door and only then realised what was happening. Two of the dragons- he thought their names were Meg and Ruby- had thrown a footballer into the swimming pool, and were laughing at him. Then he had surprised Ruby by dragging her in, screaming and kicking. Cas looked at the ground where a glass had been knocked off by the friendly struggle.

“So, either you’re still suspicious of the dragons, or you’re just really uptight about pool safety,” Dean said, turning to Cas, who had only now relaxed his tense fighting stance.

“I’m-I’m sorry. That was an overreaction,” he muttered. He gazed over to the pool that was rippling, the light glancing off it disconnectedly, then followed the light back to Dean’s face, that was looking annoyed.

“You know, I don’t think your nervousness tonight was just about being a bit socially awkward.”

“No,” Cas sighed. “I’m sorry, I just don’t trust them. And I wasn’t gonna come here without a weapon, not being able to defend myself.”

“Fine. It’s fine if you don’t trust them. It’s fine if you think they’re gonna kill you in your sleep or whatever. But it isn’t fine to pretend to be friendly with them, to pretend to like them, when really you’re thinking of how many different ways you can kill them,” Dean said quietly, almost dangerously. He might be a bit of a shitty person sometimes, but he was damned if he wasn’t fiercely loyal to all of his friends.

“No, you have the wrong idea! I truly, genuinely like your friends, and I am so grateful you’ve welcomed me into your social group. If it wasn’t for you guys, I probably would have left town by now. I am not pretending to be friendly to them, and I wouldn’t dream of killing them. I only brought my dagger with me for self-defence.”

Dean didn’t say anything.

“And as a gesture of my gratefulness,” Cas continued carefully, “I will stop bringing my dagger to school, and try my hardest to trust the dragons. It’s only a matter of time,” Cas reasoned, taking his dagger out of his pocket, and turning it in the light. Dean was silent for a few more seconds, but it was obvious he couldn’t keep it up for very long.

“You seriously take that thing to school? It’s amazing you haven’t been arrested yet, God,” Dean smirked slightly.

“I guess you don’t have very good security,” Cas smiled back, glad that Dean wasn’t still giving him the silent treatment.

“And that’s because we have the dragons,” Dean said, serious once more. “It would mean a lot to me if you tried to trust them.” Cas nodded, and put the dagger back in his pocket.

When he got home that night, Cas put the weapon back in its carved wooden box, and slid it far under his bed. He felt weird without it: it was the first thing he did when he came to town. He wandered round and round until he had found a small, dark shop at the end of a narrow street. It looked like a black magic shop or something like that. He went in, and the first thing he saw was the dagger. He asked the old shop owner about it, and she’d told him that it was an Ottoman dagger, originating in Eastern Asia. The handle and sheath were decorated in beautiful red gemstones, and there was an intricate pattern painted in gold at the base of the blade. Cas bought it, even though it took around half the money his parents gave to him when he moved here. He had full intentions of discovering the secret of the -what he then thought were, demons, and was going to avenge Hael. It all sounded so drastic to him now.

The knife being put away symbolised his new start of embracing the dragons. Dean trusted them, and he should try too. What happened to Hael was tragic, but the dragons were saving lives. A tiny part of Cas thought Hael foolish for not listening to their warnings, which made Cas feel even worse, but he tried not to think about it much.

Although, trusting the dragons was not going to be easy. His gut told him the dragons were evil. He was going to have to learn to disregard his gut.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading :) I will be updating this every night hopefully.


	3. Mythology, suspicion and Lord of the Rings

Cas, Dean and Anna were sat in the school library on a free period, a couple of weeks after the party. They were tucked away in a corner that not many people came to. The shelves were messily stacked with old books that no one really knew what were about. Anna knew what one of the books was about though.

Anna got down a dark red, leather bound book.

“This is The Avesta,” Anna announced importantly, flicking through it, trying to find the right page. “There is no English translation of it, but luckily, I can read the language.”

“What language is it?” Cas asked curiously, looking at the foreign patterns.

“Uh, Avestan.” “Ah.”

“See, our kind actually originates from Persia. Our history can be found in the religious texts of Zoroastrianism-“

“Oh come on now, you obviously just made that up,” Dean said, receiving a mild glare from the others. “Ahem, you can continue.”

“ _Thank you._ Anyway, technically, we’re not really dragons. We’re dahāgs. But it’s up to you what to call us. I prefer dahāg, but Charlie seems to love calling us dragons. I guess she’s the youngest of us, and the least traditional, and also has read a lot of Dragon Lance,” Anna said. “But okay, I’ll cut the mythology short and basically say that The Creator gave the dahāg the duty to protect humans against demons, and to guide them and nourish the Earth. For a century the dahāg ruled over the Pishdadian Dynasty, but then gave up their role to give man a chance. From then on they went across the Earth, always in their pack, protecting every place they came to. And now we’re here, I guess. Here to protect you,” Anna finished the mini-story.

“That is very interesting. Thank you for sharing your history,” Castiel said, Dean nodding agreement.

“So, I’ve wondered about this for ages, do you actually turn into dragons or what?” Dean asked.

“I thought you’d know more about them, Dean,” Castiel said, turning to the other boy. “In fact, how did you come to find out about the dragons in the first place?”

“It’s not that interesting. Mostly dumb luck. Me and Charlie have been friends since we were young, and I was sleeping round hers one night and I was telling her a scary story, and she got scared and set fire to the bed. Which was cool to my young self. Hell, it’s cool to my high school self. But yeah, I’ve always just been aware of the dragons, I’ve never really asked directly about them. Which is why we can try get all the information out of Anna now,” Dean said, bringing the attention back to Anna.

“Hm. Ok, well, in a way, we’re shape shifters, except we can only shift between human and dragon form.”

“You’re like a were-dragon,” Dean butted in.

“No because we can control it, learn your mythology Dean. Anyway! We never really go into our full dragon state, we’d be as big as houses and it would just not be very inconspicuous or convenient. But we can go part way- we can develop wings, forked tongues, even breathe fire. Usually when we transform our eyes glow red.”

“And that shows up on video cameras,” Cas added thoughtfully, remembering the screenshots he took. That seemed so long ago now.

“Yep. Modern technology and ancient mythology mix weirdly it seems. Any other questions while we’re at it?”

“Why are you cheerleaders?” Cas asked

“Fun,” Anna answered simply.

“Can you fly?” Dean asked.

“Yes.”

“How long do you live?” Castiel asked again.

“Very long.”

“Can you fly like right now?”

“No, Dean, we’re in a library,” she replied impatiently.

“How many of you are there?”

“Sixteen, including Coach Abaddon, our Āhiti.”

“You should fly,” Dean urged.

“No.”

“Do you know anything about an Ottoman dagger-“

“Fly!” Dean and Cas said these things simultaneously.

Anna’s eyes flashed dangerously at Castiel, but she quickly composed herself to turn to Dean and laugh.

“I am not flying in the middle of a library, it’s just not convenient,” Anna joked, Dean shaking his head in mock disappointment. Dean had missed the look Anna had given Cas.

“I don’t know what an Ottoman dagger is, Cas. I assume it’s some kind of weapon,” Anna said to Cas. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Why do you ask about that?”

Cas made the split decision to not tell Anna about his dagger. “I thought I saw a picture of one in the book.”

Anna tilted her head and scrutinized Cas for a few seconds until Dean got their attention. Nothing weird like that happened again, and Cas tried to forget about it, thinking about his promise to Dean to try his hardest to trust the dragons, or rather, the dahāgs.

A few days later, Dean and Cas were waiting for Sam in the impala.

“He’s always late out. It’s ‘cause he’s asking the teacher extra nerdy questions about what they’ve been learning,” Dean said, barely disguising his pride. Cas nodded.

“You know, this is like the fifth time you’ve been round ours,” Dean started saying.

“That’s because it’s the fifth time you’ve invited me round,” Cas pointed out.

“Yeah, well the point is,” Dean continued, blushing only slightly, “I’ve never been round yours.”

“You wouldn’t like it, it’s small and messy and cheap,” Cas said bluntly.

“I thought you lived with your aunt or someone?”

“No, I live alone.”

“Dude! Do you realize you could be having parties every night?”

“What? No. I am far too mature and sophisticated for that,” Cas said lightly.

“Sophisticated my ass,” Dean scoffed. Cas blinked at him.”You could at least have one party?”

“Why do you want a party so bad?”

“Parties are fun, we’re not gonna be young forever, we should make the most of it.”

“So, basically, ‘yolo’?” Cas air quoted the word.

“Ugh, no. Whatever dude,” Dean gave up. He could see Sam coming, finally.

“Okay, I’ll have a party. It could be like a late house warming party.”

Dean grinned in reply as Sam reached the Impala.

 

*-*-*

 

The party did not go as Dean expected it to go. He’d left it entirely to Cas to organize, even though he’d wanted to help. It ended up just Cas, Dean, Anna, Jo, Charlie and Hannah. It turned out, Cas had ‘forgotten’ to invite anyone else, but it was really because he didn’t particularly want his apartment trashed, or to be thrown out of the building. He’d invited Sam, but Dean had told him that it was going to be far too wild a party for a young boy like Sam. Dean was a couple of hours late because he’d had to run a few errands for his dad. Once he finally found the right apartment, he came in and saw that people were in their pajamas, and slumped across the couch watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

“What,” Dean began, lowering the case of beer he’d brought with him.

“Come join the pajama party, Dean,” Jo called, not taking her eyes off the screen.

Cas’ face appeared over the top of the couch to smile faux-innocently at Dean.

“But I thought-“ Dean was violently shushed by Charlie. Dean rolled his eyes and went to kitchen to put the beer in the fridge. He turned around and jumped when he realized Cas was there.

“What are you, like, a ninja?” Dean said. The kitchen was small, forcing them to stand close to each other. Dean quickly checked out Cas’ pajamas. He hadn’t seen him in anything but shirts, and he would say that Cas didn’t look right without a collar, except for how hot he looked. He was wearing a thin, grey x-men tee, which was just tight enough to hint at a slightly muscular chest, and dark sweat pants. Since when did he find sweat pants hot, Dean thought briefly, before turning his gaze back to Cas’ face.

“Sorry, I might have misled you about the nature of the party,” Cas said non-apologetically. “I know you wanted a ‘wild’ party to celebrate our youth, but I found this suited me much more.”

“A pajama party?” Dean asked disbelievingly.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that a bit gay?” Dean smirked.

“Yes, it is very gay of me.” Cas said pointedly. Dean smiled on the outside but on the inside he was thinking YES! He now had practically concrete proof that Cas was into guys. Now he didn’t have to be worried about that if he wanted to ask Cas out. Because he’d accidentally asked a straight boy out before, and that was just _awkward._ Especially seeing as the guy only told him he was straight _after_ he had slept with him.

“Except it’s not very gay of me to invite four girls to my house to sleep round,” Cas continued, raising one eyebrow.

“Yes, it is very gay of you to invite round four girls, two of whom are in a homosexual relationship with each other, and one being a self proclaimed ‘chick-magnet’ lesbian.”

“Ah, yes.”

“I didn’t bring any pajamas,” Dean pointed out.

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. You can borrow mine.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll just go get them.” As soon as Cas left the room, Dean scooted into the sitting room. He crouched next to the end of the couch so he could speak to Anna without disturbing everyone else.

“Cas is gay!” Dean whispered after prodding Anna’s shoulder to get her attention.

“We already knew that. Or well, I already knew that,” Anna whispered back.

“Oh. You could’ve told me,” Dean whisper-whined. “But that’s not the point. Should I ask Cas out now?”

“No, pajama parties are not appropriate times to ask people out.”

“When is an appropriate time?”

“Dean, you just need to go with the flow. If you plan it like this, to do it at a specific time, it’ll come out forced. Just go with the flow, ask him out when it feels right,” Anna said wisely.

“When it feels right. Gotcha.” Dean straightened up again, the same time Cas chucked over the pajamas he was borrowing.

There were two two-seater couches that everyone bundled on for the first couple films. It was agreed that the last people to go to sleep should win sitting privileges on the couches, even though that didn’t seem to be the most logical decision. Nevertheless, by three a.m. Anna and Hannah were asleep, Hannah in a sleeping bag on the floor, and Anna on Jo in a sleeping bag on the floor. Dean and Cas triumphantly spread out on one of the sofas, and Charlie even more triumphantly on the other one, exaggeratingly stretching. Jo complained- she had earned a sofa seat, but she didn’t want to disturb Anna.

The four of them argued quietly for a bit on what movie to watch next, but Cas settled it when he pointed out that he only had three films left in his skeletal DVD library. There was a choice of two horror films, or Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. They unanimously decided on the latter.

“Does it offend you when they kill the Fellbeasts?” Dean asked Jo.

“No, because I am a dahāg, not a Fellbeast Dean,” she replied.

“You’re related to them.”

“Your face is related to them,” Jo shot back lamely.

“It would be cool to be a Fellbeast though,” Charlie piped up. Jo gave her a weird look.

By the end of the last battle in the film, only Cas and Dean were awake. They didn’t have the heart to turf Charlie out her seat, so they stayed on their one sofa, half laying on each other in an attempt to get comfortable on the smallish couch. Dean wasn’t complaining.

“So, what two films are left?” Dean asked Cas.

“The Fourth Kind or My Bloody Valentine.”

“Not My Bloody Valentine,” Dean decided quickly. “Fourth Kind it is then.”

“But that film creeps me out.”

“Come on, it’s not real,” Dean scoffed, reaching for the remote.

“It’s based on real case studies,” Cas insisted, giving Dean a meaningful look. “We can watch it if you want though.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. If I get too creeped out I’ll just hide. Or something,” Cas said, eyeing the title screen warily.

“Your choice,” Dean shrugged and turned it on.

At some point half way through the film, Cas really did hide behind Dean, which made Dean chuckle. Three quarters through the film, Cas had fallen asleep, head on Dean’s stomach. By the end, Dean had just enough energy to turn the TV off before he too fell asleep, arm resting on Cas in a kind of cuddle.

When Dean and Cas finally woke up, much later than the others, Jo waggled her eyebrows obscenely at Dean while Cas was getting up. Dean winked back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading so far :) i had to change little bits of mythology to fit in, but most of it's real, wiki it if you're a mythology nerd, it's quite interesting :)) oh and also, i fully recommend looking at pictures of Ottoman daggers, they are so pretty aghh


	4. Cupcakes, cross-dressing and a catastrophe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not_Of_Import did a realllllyyyyy cool stylish art for this fic guys everyone should defo defo check it out, and then check out her ao3 she is so talented ugh here is the link http://jensenflapjackles.tumblr.com/post/95847534950/i-did-an-art-thing-for-the-wonderful

There was a school bake sale to raise money for the National Association for Down Syndrome. Anna roped in everyone to help make the most cupcakes. Which is why Cas was at Charlie’s house at 8am on a Saturday morning; only charity could get him up this early. There were three baking stations set up at different houses to make the process even quicker- seeing as they wanted to bake up to three hundred cupcakes by that afternoon. He was with Dean and Sam at Charlie’s house, making chocolate chip cupcakes, despite Sam actually wanting to go to Ruby’s baking-station (queue Dean endlessly teasing Sam about his crush).

A fair few hours of baking ensued in Charlie’s large kitchen, until finally they ran out of ingredients. They thought they’d made enough to satisfy Anna, despite Charlie burning one batch and Cas dropping another. They sat and ate the spoiled cupcakes, feeling proud of their work. They had about an hour till they needed to go help set up the stall to sell them and nothing to do. Dean disappeared upstairs. For a few minutes nobody really thought anything of it until-

“Aw crap, not again,” Charlie said, biting back a laugh. The others turned around to see Dean bounding downstairs in Charlie’s cheerleader outfit. Cas and Sam burst out laughing as he came into the lounge to pose in front of them.

“Get out of my outfit, you’ll stretch it, fat ass,” Charlie ordered sternly, trying not to laugh.

“Gimme an F!” Dean started, striking a ridiculous pose and glaring good-naturedly at Charlie.

“F!” Cas and Sam played along.

“Gimme a U!”

“U!”

“Gimme a- oh I can’t be bothered with all of that, fuck you, Charlie!” he cheered, beaming.

Charlie rolled her eyes, but gave into a giggling fit when Dean started trying to do a cartwheel. The three of them laughed as dean almost knocked over a plant, and landed at Cas’ feet, red in the face and laughing. Cas reached out a hand to help him up.

“That shouldn’t be sexy as it is,” Cas murmured, which made Dean fall over again. Charlie cackled and Sam started making barfing noises, while Cas just smirked as Dean blushed even more.

Luckily, the rest of the day went smoothly, and they sold almost all of their cakes. Their group raised over $400 and the principal commended them on their efforts. Once he got home, Cas couldn’t help but ponder over whether his comment regarding Dean in the cheerleader’s uniform had been taken as a joke, a flirtation, or something in between.

 

*-*-*

 

Soon, summer crept up. The weather was beautiful and hot. Dean just wanted to go out and play sports, except, as it turned out, Cas didn’t really like sports.

“That’s not true, I just tend to dislike team sports,” Cas said. He was sat in Dean’s room on a clear Sunday.

“Just one game of football?” Dean asked.

“No, thank you. You go play, I’ve got some work to do anyway.”

“Pfft, how can you work on a day like this?”

“Can I use your laptop?”

“Yeah sure. Come out if you want though,” Dean said, finally leaving Cas.

For a bit, Cas finished homework, but he didn’t actually have that much to do for once. He considered going outside. He peeked outside the window and saw that Dean and Sam were playing a game with some guys from the team, some that Cas didn’t know that well. He really didn’t like team sports. So instead, he went back on Dean’s laptop and decided to look up some stuff about the dahāgs, just out of interest. Except he had no idea how to spell it.

‘Dahayge’, ‘Duhagg’, ‘Darhayje’... he gave up and ended up on the Wikipedia page for the Avesta instead. He looked at it for a while, finding it fascinating. He stumbled across a page about a King Jamshid, and realized he recognized the stories about him. ‘The creator gave him the duty to guide humans and nourish the Earth’, ‘Ruled over the Pishdadian Dynasty’. Cas squinted at the screen. This didn’t make sense. Why would Anna tell them the same story, but about the dahāgs? He continued reading until he recognized a word. Āhiti. That was what Anna had called Coach Abaddon. He clicked on the rough translation.

‘Defilement. Pollution.’

It had to be a mistake. Maybe Cas had remembered wrong, a lot of the Avestan words looked the same. But a small part of Cas couldn’t help but twist with worry. Again, he was reminded of his gut feeling that the dahāgs were dangerous.

Just then, Dean bounded into the room panting. And sweating. And Holy nipples, Batman, Dean was topless. And panting. And sweating.

“Hey,” Dean greeted.

“H-hey, er, how was the game?” Cas asked, shutting down the laptop. He momentarily forgot about his new found suspicion of the dragons. What? He was a hormonal teenager, sue him.

“Good, the other team won, but it was close. They’ve all gone to the park now, I thought I’d stay back with you. Up for playing Frisbee?” Dean offered, just about catching his breath. Before Cas could say anything, Dean continued, “it’s not a team sport, so you can’t use that as an excuse.” He smiled hopefully at Cas.

“Um,” Cas hesitated, reminded of what he’d just been researching on the laptop. If he said no, Dean would hang round and see what Cas was doing on the laptop. He didn’t want Dean to think that he was trying to dig up dirt on the dragons, because he wasn’t. It was just by chance that he’d found something possibly incriminating... That thought made Cas flush with guilt. The cheerleaders were so kind and friendly to Cas, and Cas genuinely liked them, and here he was thinking that they could be evil. He should just stop now before he could get himself more worked up, before someone could get upset. Plus, he _would_ like to play Frisbee with Dean. It was a nice day after all, and it was just the two of them now. “Go get the Frisbee, I’ll just finish my work here,” Cas finished.

As soon as Dean left the room, Cas hurriedly opened the laptop again, and went on browsing history to delete the pages about the Avesta, just to be safe. While he was doing that he couldn’t help but notice the history of [www.bustyasianbeauties.com](http://www.bustyasianbeauties.com/) was on there a lot. Cas rolled his eyes and smirked, then shut the laptop down. He was going to play Frisbee with a sweaty, topless Dean Winchester. Awesome.

*-*-*

For a couple weeks, Cas forgot about what he’d found out about the dahāg. That was until one lunch time, as he was walking to the table, he overheard Anna say quickly and quietly “hush, he’s coming.” By the time he actually got to the table, they were talking about something else. Cas glanced at them suspiciously but decided to ignore it. Probably just girl stuff. Or something.

But then it happened again, and again, it kept happening. After a practice, a small group of them were all talking with low voices. Cas walked over, intending to chat with Anna, but when he got into hearing distance he heard his name, then repeated louder as Jo realised he was listening. Cas asked them what they were talking about. Jo replied easily and calmly, something about cheer routines. It was said so calmly, like it’d been rehearsed.

They must be planning something. Cas must’ve done something wrong. Maybe he knew too much. They were going to kill him. They must’ve found out about what he’d looked at on Dean’s laptop. This was the end. Walking around school made him feel sick with nerves, he didn’t know when they were going to do it, it could be anytime. Dean sneaked up on him while he was getting something out his locker, and he jumped a mile. It made him think. He’d never caught Dean talking about him. Maybe the cheerleaders were planning something against him too.

Faux-nonchalantly, Cas asked Dean if he knew what the girls were talking about all the time, that Cas wasn’t allowed to hear.

Dean flushed and said he had no idea. That was enough. Cas went home that night and just sat on his bed staring at his wall. It was a Friday night. Before he’d left he’d observed Jo and Dean exchanging a business-looking nod, before they got in their cars. It’d be tonight.

Right on queue, his phone began vibrating. Cas stared at the caller ID for a few seconds. He answered the call.

“Hey, Cas,” Anna greeted.

“Hi,” Cas replied quietly.

“I have some homework I really need some help with, do you mind coming over? Nowish?” she asked, her voice even. Cas fought the urge to scoff at the lame excuse. He toyed with the idea of refusing for a second, but decided against it. They’d only come to his apartment anyway. Well at least he’d die fighting.

The front door was slightly a jar at Anna’s house. He slowly crept in, making sure the door didn’t creak. There was a piece of paper tacked to the wall saying **CAS meet me in the basement :)**. He supposed they didn’t want to clean blood off the hallway carpet. He continued creeping towards the basement, the route familiar from the several parties he’d attended here. It was dark. He reached the bottom of the stairs.

It all happened so fast.

Five or six dahāgs leapt at Cas seemingly from nowhere as the lights went on, they were shouting and screaming, smiling with bloodlust. Cas, already in survival mode, quickly reacted, whipping out two spray bottles of holy water from under his coat like guns. The dragons winced, backing away as the holy water burned their skin, and now everyone was shouting. Cas kicked a dahāg in the stomach who had gotten too close and was just about to take out his treasured Ottoman dagger. He had been very indecisive about bringing it. Judging by Anna’s reaction to its name in the library that time, it was his most powerful weapon, and he didn’t want to risk the dragons taking it away from him. But he figured as this was the night he was to die, he could maybe take out a few dragons before they burnt him alive.

However he hesitated before pulling the dagger into view. Something was wrong. The shouting he heard weren’t shouts of battle, they were shouts of pain and shock. He realised no one was advancing on him. Jo was on the floor, her eye’s screwed up in pain, with Anna and Ruby trying to help her. Then finally Cas noticed the balloons around the room.

Oh man, he’d fucked up bad.

Dean, who had been behind the couch all this time, arms flung protectively over his brother, shot up.

“What the fuck Cas!?” he shouted incredulously. Sam looked slightly sick with worry.

Just then, Jo waved Anna and Meg away, and stood up. The skin round her eyes was red and scabbed, but her actual eyes were beginning to glow crimson, and they were focused on Cas.

Dean noticed this, and took quick action, leaping over the sofa, dragging Sam with him. The Winchesters took a pliant Castiel, one arm each, out of the house and down the street a bit.

The outside air was cool and sobering as the weight of what he had just done really sunk into Cas, and Dean and Sam unceremoniously dropped Cas to the curb. He only then managed to uncurl his hand from his dagger in his jacket, so as to put his head in his hands.

There was a heavy silence, as Sam sat down on the curb, leaving a big space between him and Cas, and looked away from his brother who was pacing in front of Cas, pulling at his hair.

“What the hell!?” Dean suddenly bellowed, making even himself jump. “We throw you a surprise birthday party and THIS is your reaction?”

Cas inhaled sharply. A surprise birthday party? “M-my birthday isn’t for two months.” Cas said, faux-defiantly. He was running low on adrenaline now, and his hands were shaking. He wasn’t going to be killed by the dragons today. He might be killed by Dean though. All the friendships he’d built, trust earned, memories made. He’d thrown them away. He was such a massive asshole.

“If we threw you a party around your birthday, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise, would it?” Dean spat, quieter now, somehow making him sound even more dangerous.

“You should’ve told me,” Cas murmured.

“Seriously?”

“I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, it was all so suspicious-“ Cas gasped down a lungful of air, “I don’t know, I thought you were planning to kill me and I know I shouldn’t have but I’d seen some suspicious stuff about the dahāg lore and,” Cas gulped again, speaking faster and faster, “I just didn’t trust them completely I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you and your friends for the last time, you want me to leave, I understand, I’ll pack my things, I’ll...” Cas trailed off. He kind of wanted to cry, with this overwhelming wave of emotions crashing over him. He was furious at himself for being such an imbecile, distraught at the fact that he had to leave. He’d only been here for maybe a bit more than three months but he’d built up such special friendships. But he would not cry, not in front of Dean and Sam, he didn’t want to guilt trip them. He would leave quietly, no fuss, no drama.

Dean sighed a short, deep sigh. Sam continued to look away silently, allowing the two friends a fraction of privacy.

“I swear to God you’re more dangerous than the dragons, Cas,” Dean said. “But you don’t have to leave. We don’t want you to- _I_ don’t want you to leave. Yeah, everyone’s probably pissed off at you right now, but we can forgive you.”

“Why?” Cas asked forlornly.

“’Cause you’re Cas,” Dean replied simply. “Unless, of course, you’re planning on attacking them again?”

“I would never- I promise not to hurt them ever again.” Regret rung through his gravelly voice.

Dean nodded, and shoved his hands in his pockets, then looked away.

“It looks like the house isn’t on fire, which is a good sign. We’ll go in and you can apologise, they’ll be pissed, but they’ll be understanding, I’m sure.”

Sam and Cas got up and the three of them traipsed slowly to the house, but Cas stopped before the gate.

“Can you guys go in first, I’ll follow in a few minutes.” Dean nodded silently and the brothers made their way in. As soon as they were out of sight, Cas started running.

He ran until he couldn’t breathe, and then continued with a brisk walk. He was going to the greyhound bus station. It was kind of far away on foot, but it was small, out of the way, and maybe the others wouldn’t find him there. He’d get a bus to anywhere and decide what to do from there on. He couldn’t bring his stuff with him, but he didn’t have much anyway, at least not much that wouldn’t remind him of this town.

See, Cas had barely heard Dean saying that they’ll forgive him. He knew he’d gone too far. Any olive branch that they were offering was out of pity or sympathy, they didn’t really want him to stay. He definitely didn’t _deserve_ to stay. They’d all be better off without him anyway. He was dangerous to the dragons even though they’d never hurt him. He had been mistrustful all this time. What kind of sick person would so easily attack their friends over a surprise birthday party? He hoped he hadn’t permanently wounded anyone. Cas sat down on a bench outside the bus station.

He’d betrayed the dragons, and he felt sick and miserable about that, how badly he’d treated them. But that wasn’t what he felt worst about. He’d betrayed Dean, the one who had never lost faith in him. Dean had believed in Cas through the pervert scandal, through attacking Charlie, he reached out to Cas and made friends with him, made sure he made lots more friends. Dean had put up with Cas’ weird, crazy sounding suspicions, his awkwardness, his everything, and he’d betrayed that. He had thought Dean would be in on a plan to kill him. Dean must be so disappointed in him. And Cas couldn’t have that.

He’d built up such a strong bond with Dean, and he’d shattered that bond. Dean needed a better friend than Cas.

But coaches came and went. Cas couldn’t bring himself to leave. He wanted to, but he just- he just couldn’t. Something-someone made him want to stay.

Two hours after Cas had sat down, another person came and sat next to him. It was Sam. Cas didn’t run, and Sam didn’t call anyone. They just sat together.

“How come you’re allowed out on your own at two AM?” Cas finally asked calmly.

“Dean thinks I’m with Charlie at the moment, but she let me go. It’s safe enough for me to walk around at this time- I have the dragons on speed dial- it’s just Dean’s protective, y’know?”

Cas nodded silently.

“They’re all looking for you. Apart from Jo, she’s gone to Abaddon to do a healing thing for her eye.”

“Will she be ok?”

“Definitely.”

“So how did you find me?”

Sam smiled sadly and gazed around at the bus station. “I’ve been here before, when I was going to run away, and didn’t want anyone to find me.”

“You were going to run away?” Cas asked, looking at Sam.

“Yeah. Just two years ago. It was my dad. He was trying to control me too much, who my friends were, my hobbies, just everything. I wanted to be my own person, I wanted to escape. But I stayed. For Dean. It would’ve killed him if I’d’ve left. I knew he’d only blame himself. So I stayed for him.”

“I know the feeling,” Cas practically whispered. “Why don’t you want to run away anymore?”

“Dean helped me stand up to dad, even though it was hard for him to defy him. It was all a bit rocky for a while but we’re ok now,” Sam paused for a second. “And it will be ok for you too, Cas. We’re friends. We’re good friends, and we don’t want you to leave.”

There was that overwhelming wave of emotion again.

“Come back with me, the dragons have something to say to you. Don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing. Come on,” Sam said, standing up. After a few seconds, Cas got up and followed Sam. Because he couldn’t leave. Sam was sincere, he could tell. So they walked back to Anna’s house together, after Sam called Charlie to say they were heading over.

Cas walked down the basement stairs again, fearful for a different reason than last time. They were all there, and Dean was too.

“I cannot express how sorry I am,” Cas started, addressing all of them. “But know that I will _never_ do this again. I’m so, so sorry.” Cas continued to apologise profusely until Anna stopped him.

“Ok, alright, we get it. You look sincere enough. Apology accepted,” she said, a few of the other cheerleaders nodding in agreement. Jo still wasn’t there.

“But once and for all, Cas, we’re going to show you that we are the good guys. Next weekend, just wait,” Anna said cryptically, not giving Cas a chance to ask more about it. “In the mean time, we’ve got all these balloons and party food. We’ve got a failed surprise birthday party to finish.”

And so they partied for a few hours. Except it was very quiet and sober, and slightly tense. Especially because Dean was avoiding Cas like the black plague. It was ok though, it gave Cas a chance to go round and personally apologise to the cheerleaders and to really appreciate everyone’s friendship and forgiveness.

On the way out, Cas caught up to Dean, who was walking away from him. Cas grabbed the taller boys shoulder and turned him to face him.

“I’m sorry,” Cas stated.

“It’s the dragons that got hurt-“ Dean began gruffly and emotionlessly.

“I’m sorry.” He knew Dean knew what this apology was in regards to. Dean had been personally insulted by the run away attempt. Just like when it had almost happened with Sam, he’d begun to blame himself. Everyone tried to run away from Dean Winchester.

“I-I couldn’t leave you. I’m sorry I jeopardized our bond. I’m sorry I-“ Dean hugged Cas, stopping anymore apologies falling from his lips. Cas hugged back and silently promised to never betray Dean’s friendship again.


	5. A quest, an inferno and a very awkward moment

In the week leading up to the weekend where the dragons were going to ‘prove they’re the good guys’, friendships went from guarded to normal and anticipation mounted in the group. Although Cas still had no idea what it was going to be, he would not feel suspicious or paranoid at all. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Even though the rejection of his fears felt quite forced and unnatural to him, a natural survivor. He’d insisted the dragons needn’t prove their goodness of heart to him, but he was also intrigued as to what was going to happen, and the cheerleaders seemed eager anyway.

On the Saturday, Cas met Dean and Charlie at a cave entrance in the middle of a forest. He only just about managed to not get himself lost on the way.

When Charlie and Dean saw their friend they couldn’t help but grin.

“What? What are we going to be doing today?” Cas asked, barely containing his burning curiosity.

“We’re going on a quest!” Charlie exclaimed. Cas waited for the excited girl to clarify. “There’s a monster in this cave, a fearsome beast that has been killing and eating people!”

Cas’ eyes widened in terror. Dean gave Charlie a subtle signal to stop playing it up so much.

“Erm, sorry, that was a bit dramatic. But it’s fun to be dramatic, it’s like living in a fantasy novel,” Charlie digressed, voice going dreamy. “But anyway, ok, for real, there is a man-and-woman-eating monster in this cave and as the protectors of this town, it’s the dragons’ job to stop it. Except this is only one already-wounded wendigo, so we only need me today.”

“A wendigo?” Cas said, with the tiniest hint of disbelief. At this moment, Dean cut in, proud to be slightly in the know.

“Come on man, if there’s dragons, it’s not that hard to believe there are wendigos. There are more too... I’ve been on a couple of the safer quests with the girls before and I’ve seen werewolves, wendigos, and once even a rougarou.” Dean sounded impressed with himself.

“Um, ok. Is it safe though?” Cas asked, believing in the monsters, and kind of fearing for his life.

“Yeah dude, trust me, I was born to quest.” Charlie winked at Cas then abruptly walked into the dark of the cave. She looked like she was enjoying her role of quest master a bit too much.

Dean followed Charlie, into the daunting pitch black. Now, Cas wasn’t afraid of the dark, he wasn’t a baby. But he was wary of it, like any sane person should be. He hung back for a few seconds, until Dean looked back at him and gave him an encouraging smile. Cas mentally braced himself. If he can attack a bunch of dragons and live, he can walk into a dark cave.

After a few seconds of discomfort, the cave turned a bit and suddenly there was light. Cas audibly sighed with relief. He looked for the source of the warm flickering light, expecting a candle but realised it was actually Charlie’s hands. They were on fire. That was... awesome. Except the flickering of the fire wasn’t perfect. It kept casting weird shadows on the wall, some interesting and distracting, some just plain scary. Shadows of hands reaching across the rocky walls, bats swooping down. Cas was sure it was just his imagination- he was quite on edge today. But when he was staring at a shadow that kind of looked like a face, he stumbled and almost fell on his head if it weren’t for Dean catching him, which meant their faces were very close together for a few seconds. Cas flushed with embarrassment for tripping and then flushed even deeper when Dean laughed at Cas and he could feel the breath ghost across his face. From then, Cas and Dean held hands. Partly because Cas was a klutz and Dean didn’t want him to dislocate his shoulder or something, and partly for another reason that neither of them would admit out loud. Personally, Cas found it comforting, and now he could focus on the steady heat in his hand instead of the shadows dancing on the walls.

Suddenly Charlie stopped. “Ok guys, the wendigo should be just around this corner. What’s gunna happen is I’m gunna torch this mother, and you are going to stand back and watch. Any questions?”

Dean and Cas shook their heads, Dean smiling in anticipation, Cas’ shoulders squared in apprehension. Dean was like that the first time he was on a quest, but kind of a hundred times worse because there’d been two werewolves, and Coach Abaddon, the latter being the scariest. Now he was more comfortable on quests, and trusted the dragons’ judgement for safety. After all, he’d never been hurt. Just as he thought that, Charlie turned the corner and her battle calm face dropped into panic.

Dean and Cas rounded the corner with her. There was not one wounded wendigo, but a nest of wendigos, and their tall disgusting bodies were lunging towards them.

“RUN,” Charlie yelled, dark wings suddenly shooting from her back, crumpling painfully into the stone sides of the caves, and knocking Dean and Cas onto their backs. They watched in horror as Charlie raised her head and let out a blood-curdling roar, painfully loud. The boys managed to stagger up and see Charlie begin fighting a few of the wendigos, before they rounded the corner again. They stumbled silently through the dark, panting, holding onto each others arms. Dean put his hand to his ear that was still ringing from the roar and felt something wet and warm. This had gone so wrong. Very soon they found themselves in pitch black, and almost completely deaf. Cas found the edge of the wall and they kept following it until they realised they were in a dead end. They sat down and Dean suddenly remembered something. Their hearing very slowly returned, though it was a bit like they were hearing the world through tinny speakers, as Dean rummaged through his pockets and found the small torch Charlie had insisted he bring. Thank God. He turned on the light, and Cas and Dean began making their way down the tunnels again. Soon they saw light from around a corner, and they dashed forward, prematurely taking deep breaths of what they thought would be fresh air-

Instead they choked on some thick dark gray smoke. They must’ve gone the wrong way, because they were back at the wendigo nest, which was on fire. And Holy Shit, there were two wendigos leaping towards them.

A clawed arm flung out towards Cas who was the closest, and time went funny, as it often does when seconds away from death.

In three seconds Cas managed to think through a lot. This must be the dragons’ way of getting rid of us. We knew too much. They lulled us into a fake sense of security, so they could kill us, and it would look like an accident. He accepted his death, as he’d done just a week before on his way to Anna’s, but why Dean, why did he have to die? He was good, honest, loyal. He didn’t deserve this. In fact, Dean was fine before Cas, he was an ally of the dragons, didn’t know too much or ask too much. Now he was getting disposed of along with Cas. He hoped that someone, some when would realise the dragons are evil, and do the job he couldn’t. Kill them, avenge Hael... avenge Dean.

But someone jumped in front of Cas at the last second, getting sliced through the stomach instead of Cas. Two dragons had just swooped in. Meg and Coach Abaddon. Meg fell to the ground, blood pouring out of her fresh wound. The wendigo reeled back ready to strike again when Abaddon let out a searing blast of fire from her mouth, thrusting the monsters back.

Cas barely noticed the blistering heat, as he reached forward to try help Meg who was bleeding to death from the attack that was meant for him, but Abaddon pushed him away roughly and told the boys to get out, Meg was fine. Cas lurched back, and he saw Meg’s eyes flutter open, glowing crimson. Charlie was suddenly behind the boys. She told them to follow her.

After half a minute, the roaring sound of fire and fighting dimmed down. Progress through the cave was slow as Charlie was limping, and the light from her hands was dim. She had ash all over her face and clothes, and Dean still had blood dripping from his ear, but he didn’t seem to notice. Cas was the least wounded, with just a few bruises from being shoved about for his protection.

The three of them were quiet until they reached fresh air, and Charlie fell to her knees, exhausted and ashamed. “I’m so, so sorry. That wasn’t supposed to- we have really good safety procedures usually, and we so rarely make a mistake about what we’re fighting. Hester and Hannah scouted the cave just last night, I don’t know what happened. And even when mistakes are made, it’s usually ok, ‘cause we can handle a bit of wear and tear, but... I’m so sorry to put you in danger like that, and oh God Dean you’re bleeding, we have to-“

“Charlie stop worrying, it’s ok. It’s our fault for being there and then I was the one that got us lost, if I’d’ve remembered the torch sooner we would’ve been completely fine, seriously. And my ear will be alright, you just have one hell of a girly scream,” Dean joked, making Charlie smirk a little. The two of them looked at Cas who had remained silent. He was looking at the ground.

“Meg was ready to die for me,” Cas whispered. The sentence hung heavy with guilt as Cas remembered his supposed-to-be dying wish for someone to kill the dahāgs. And then Meg, a powerful woman who could save countless people and was worth a hundred times more than Cas, almost sacrificed her life for him. After he’d been so abusive to their friendship, after he’d had such deceitful thoughts. Well never again. “I’m sorry for mistrusting you. I’m sorry.”

 

*-*-*

 

“So I saw you and Cas holding hands in the cave,” Charlie said, smiling lewdly at Dean across the table. Enough time had passed for them to joke about it now. The two friends were sat on a picnic table outside on a free period. They both had homework to do probably, but instead they were just chilling.

“Yeah, sorry for making you the third wheel,” Dean winked.

“A quest is a hell of a first date,” Charlie pointed out thoughtfully.

“Just ‘cause quests make you orgasm.” Dean failed to dodge Charlie’s leg, kicking him in the shin.

“For real though, when are you going to ask Cas out?”

“I dunno. Anna told me to wait for the right time, and I haven’t found a right time yet. Actually, I have a few times, but things go wrong. Like one time I was going to, we were playing Frisbee, and he was seriously giving me bedroom eyes-“

“That was after we were playing football and you kicked us all out of your garden?” Charlie interrupted.

“Um, yeah, I-“

“And you took your shirt off, you are a slut, Dean Winchester,” Charlie playfully reprimanded. “I’m sorry, do continue. I will stop mocking.”

Dean huffed, but carried on. “So I was gunna ask him to go on a date with me then, but then I think he got distracted by something and the Frisbee hit him in the face and his nose started bleeding and just... yeah.”

“Eep.”

“And then there was the whole surprise birthday party that I would’ve asked him out after, but, well you know. And then the cave and...”

“Yeah, I get it. Your time will come soon, Romeo.”

And Charlie was right. Kind of.

Only a few days later, chemistry class was in action. Dean was paying attention- he actually kind of liked this class- but couldn’t help keep glancing at Cas’ snoozing form at the front of the class room. His head was tilted forward to look like he was staring intently at his textbook but the rest of his body looked fast asleep. Dean couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

“So... Castiel and.... your partner, would you like to come up and finish the formula?” the teacher said, the sound of his name jolting Cas awake.

“Uh,” Cas started, looking at his partner helplessly. The Golem, as Dean insisted everyone called him, just sat staring ahead. Cas got flustered as he had no idea what to write, and the teacher was getting impatient. Dean watched Cas stand up, blushing and looking fearfully at the board as he held the pen a few inches away from it.

“We don’t have all day, Castiel,” the teacher said, tapping his foot impatiently.

Cas glanced over his shoulder and found Dean’s gaze, even though Cas was totally flustered and under pressure, the look kind of relaxed him. The eye contact shared Cas’ exasperation for the teacher and for the Golem and for the class, and Dean acknowledged it, shrugging with his eyes and silently saying ‘what can you do’. Then Cas turned back to the board, away from the split second of eye contact, and started writing on the board. It was completely wrong, and the teacher was getting more annoyed by the second, but Cas just continued writing getting more and more flustered. The easiest thing to do would’ve been to admit that Cas didn’t know the formula, but no, Cas never came up with the most logical plan first.

It was very endearing. Dean beamed as the formula got longer and longer- he couldn’t believe how long Cas was dragging this out. But beaming wasn’t enough. He needed to let his joy at Cas’ existence out. He barely realised what he was doing as he stood up, the class turning their attention to him.

“Cas will you go on a date with me?” he asked, voice breaking slightly. Dean didn’t even realise he was going to say it. Shit that was so embarrassing.

Most of the class laughed, as the teacher and Cas turned astounded to look at Dean, and some of the girls ‘aww’ed. Cas blushed even deeper- if that was possible, and the teacher rolled his eyes.

Dean felt so dumb. Why now? In front of the whole class? And not even in a quiet, romantic moment, but when Cas was getting ever more flustered at the front of the class with the teacher breathing down his neck. Way to go to put Cas under pressure like that. But then Dean stopped feeling dumb, because Cas smiled and discreetly nodded. He put a full stop on the formula and walked back to his desk.

Dean and Cas sat down in unison.

“Well now that little show is over, let’s get back to the lesson,” the teacher announced. “And we’ll begin by rubbing out the whole of this formula and starting again.”

Dean felt quite proud of himself now. Despite the weird timing, it had felt right to him, although Anna probably wouldn’t approve if she heard. But now he had an official date with Cas. One that his whole chem class could confirm, even. Awesome.

Over on the other side of the class room, the Golem next to Cas turned to him and asked in a simple, deep voice: “I thought you and Dean were already dating?”

Cas was too shocked from hearing the sound of his partner’s voice to respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading so far!


	6. Dates, disaster and dahāgs

Cas was frantically going through his clothes. He only had ten minutes before Dean was due to arrive. Dean had told him to ‘wear something nice’. That seriously didn’t help at all. He would’ve asked Anna what clothes consolidate as ‘nice’ on a first date, or even asked her for a hint of where the date will actually be because Dean wouldn’t tell him, but he didn’t want to seem pathetic and cliché. But now, he was standing in his bedroom with no pants on, and a pile of shirts at his feet, so he decided it was time to give up his dignity. He dialled Anna’s number.

“Quick, where is Dean taking me?”

“Hello to you too, Cas. What, is he kidnapping you?” Anna answered brightly.

“Anna!” Cas whined.

“Ok, I don’t know where. But judging by Dean’s dating history, he is a bit of an old school romancer.”

“So what do I wear? And don’t say something nice.”

“Something smart. Gotta go, good luck, and relax, you two have been dating for months, just without the kissing and the sexing,” Anna said. She probably thought that was helpful. For some reason it made Cas even more nervous. He didn’t understand his body. When he was on the warpath to his death, to fighting demons or dragons or whatever, he was fine, but when there’s a dark cave or say, a first date, only then will he start shaking and sweating.

Seven minutes. Smart. Ok. Cas put on his white shirt, after checking it for stains and then started fretting on whether to wear a tie or not. He finally decided yes, just as the doorbell rang, so he quickly put it on then went to answer the door.

“Hey Cas,” Dean greeted calmly but with a hint of shyness. He was wearing a navy blue suit with his shirt buttoned down. He looked like a movie star, jeez. That was until Dean lost his cool air with a spluttering laughter fit. Cas abruptly slammed the door on Dean’s face. He’d forgotten his pants.

A minute later. Start again. Cas opened the door again, and Dean was there, slightly red in the face from laughing. Not as red in the face as Cas would probably remain for the rest of the night.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas said, closing the door behind him.

“You ok?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go then.”

Cas’ apartment was right next to the town centre, so Dean left the impala parked, and they walked. Dean explained that they were going to a fancy restaurant, _Les Frères Tristes._ But when they got there, the restaurant was roped off and there were groups of people standing around. There was a plume of smoke coming from the back of the restaurant. Dean dashed forward to ask someone what happened. A woman that looked like she was probably the head chef turned round.

“There was a kitchen fire. The restaurant will be shut for the rest of the night, we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused,” she said, with a forlorn twist to her words.

Dean made a gesture meaning no apology was necessary then continued, “Was anyone hurt?”

The woman slowly shook her head, then turned away as someone else called for her attention.

Dean went back to Cas.

“So... where do _you_ want to go?” Dean gave Cas a self deprecating smile.

Cas thought for a second. “Biggersons.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. It’s where we ate the first day I became friends with you. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“It’s symbolic, in a way,” Cas decided. If what Anna said was true, and Dean and Cas had kind of been dating without the kissing and the sexing for months, that would technically have been their first date. So it was only right to have their official first date there too.

So the pair went to the fast food joint in formal attire, attracting the attention of quite a few people. It wasn’t as tense as Cas had been worried it would be. It was just them hanging out like they always did, except when Dean got some milkshake on his nose and Cas swooped in and licked it off, and Dean complimenting Cas on his ability to be dorky and sexy at the same time.

And then afterwards they walked down the side of the river for a bit, holding hands. This wasn’t like it was when they were just hanging out. They discussed deeper things about themselves, asked deeper questions, but also laughed and joked more. Whenever there was a comfortable silence, Cas would get distracted by the river. It was reflecting the moon and the street and the two boys, light bouncing off the ripples sporadically. The lights and colours merged into weird shapes, and kept Cas’ attention until Dean stopped him. They had just reached the bit where the river goes into the forest.

“Can’t we go any further?” Cas asked.

“You want to go into a forest at night time, after you’ve seen the monsters that could be lurking in there?” Dean asked disbelievingly.

“But wouldn’t the forest be safer than ever if we have dahāgs protecting the town?” Dean looked at the forest hesitantly. You couldn’t see further than five foot.

“I dunno, Cas, Jo told me to avoid the forest at night time,” he replied uneasily.

“That’s ok then, we’ll just walk back to mine,” Cas smiled. He heard a quiet voice in his head pointing out how suspicious that sounded, but he could almost completely ignore it.

Once back at his apartment, Dean walked him up to his door. Cas internally laughed at the tension that was mounting. Dean had been to Cas’ place so many times before, but it was definitely different this time. Dean was stood by the door. Cas took a step closer so that he was invading Dean’s personal space, and looked at him, only having to look up slightly. He swore Dean must be wearing lifts in his shoes, he wasn’t always this tall. Then Cas stopped thinking for a few seconds because Dean leant forward and kissed him on the lips. When Dean leaned back again, Cas’ lips chased him and they kissed again, this time deeper and longer. When they had both leaned back, Dean smiled and winked and started walking down the hall.

There was the sound of the apartment door opening and Cas clearing his throat.

“You’re not getting away that easily,” Cas said, a mischievous glint in his eyes. Later he would chastise himself for using such a corny line, but right then he was in the heat of the moment, under the influence of Dean Winchester, in need of a little loving. He could go on.

Dean turned, eyebrows raised at Cas’ sultry tone. Green eyes met blue for a few seconds, tension mounting. Cas actually had the urge to throw himself upon Dean right there in the hallway, but luckily for his neighbours, he had enough restraint to get Dean into his place before pinning him up against a wall and kissing him hard. Dean’s hand flew up to tangle gently in Cas’ already tousled hair, and Cas let out a deep sigh of contentedness. He hadn’t realised how long he’d wanted to do this. Cas quietly moaned as he felt Dean’s tongue probe against his lips. Cas leaned in even closer to Dean so their bodies were pressed flush together, pushing Dean back slightly, which resulted in him accidentally turning the light off. Dean raised his eyebrows in a way that said ‘suits me’, which made Cas chuckle, then he lead Dean to the sofa where he sat down, Dean falling into place on his lap to continue their make out session in the faint light from the fairy lights Cas had left on during the day.

Dean grinded his hips down into Cas’ making him gasp. Cas reached forward and started unbuttoning Dean’s shirt so as to scatter his chest with kisses and sucks as their hips ground together in unison. There was only the sound of panting and kissing as Dean reached down and undid his pants to stroke himself. Soon Cas followed suit and they stroked themselves, kissing and touching each other. Dean cursed quietly as he came over his hand, Cas coming only a few seconds later, looking into Dean’s eyes half lidded. Dean leaned in for one more chaste kiss, and then shuffled off of Cas’ lap, onto the sofa so to prevent Cas’ legs going dead. It would still be a few seconds before _his_ legs would be solid enough to go clean up in the bathroom.

“That has been a long time coming,” Cas sighed happily, gazing at the glow of the fairy lights, and then at the shadows they threw over Dean’s slightly pink face.

*-*-*

 

There was a practice on the Sunday after that first date. Cas and Sam came down to watch and occasionally pretend to study. There was a cool breeze on that sunny afternoon and none of the football team could really be bothered to go home after they’d hit the showers. They had the whole pitch to themselves, so most of them decided to hang around and relax for a bit. Except they couldn’t relax for very long, because soon Jo came over to them and challenged them to a game of football.

“I dunno, sweetheart, I wouldn’t wanna hurt you accidentally,” Benny smiled at the petite blonde. Jo smiled sweetly back.

“Oh I’m sure you couldn’t if you tried.”

“You know, they’re actually surprisingly strong,” Dean piped up, liking the idea of playing a game against the dragons.

“Yeah, go on, or are you too scared?” Jo taunted.

Benny laughed and looked at the other team mates to see what they thought. There was a general consensus.

“Yes!” Jo fist pumped, and went to get the girls. So they played a game. It started off very mild, with the boys trying their hardest not to hurt the girls, but when the cheerleaders began winning, the team got competitive. The dragons had to keep their powers way in check, although Dean thought he saw Charlie knock Kevin _and_ Alfie down with a bit of superhuman strength. Soon it was obvious the boys were going to lose, however hard they played, so they began going easy again, so that they could pretend they let the cheerleaders win. Benny shook hands with Jo, and that was that.

“Stop complaining,” Benny growled light-heartedly to Kevin who was looking for a bruise on his side. What Benny didn’t mention was that he thought he could feel a bruise coming on his shin where Meg had accidentally slammed into him. The girls really were more powerful than they looked. Most of the boys went home after that, leaving only Dean, who went over to chat with the girls.

Cas and Sam came over now that the team were away and complimented everyone on their games today.

“That last game was less fun than I thought it would be,” Jo admitted. “We had to check our powers so much.”

“Hey, you don’t have to check them now right? We all know you’re superhuman freaks. We could play another game now, me, Sam and Cas versus you guys” Dean said excitedly.

Jo looked at Anna for confirmation. The red-head nodded eagerly. Cas was not so eager.

Dean saw Cas look sceptical and went over to him to put his arms around his waist.

“You up for it? I know you don’t like team sports, but this isn’t gunna be your average team game,” Dean said. Cas considered this. He knew everyone on the team so that was ok, and it did promise to be quite interesting.

“Yes, I am up for it,” Cas announced. Dean leaned in and kissed him until Sam cried out a ‘PDA’ and Charlie laughed.

The game went as only could be expected. The dragons easily slaughtered the three man team, so easily it was pathetic. The three of them even went up against just Charlie and she still won effortlessly, despite Dean being one of the best players in the school, Sam being a pretty good player too, and Cas, well he wasn’t bad. She was using her enhanced strength and speed without holding back, easily stopping any of them from charging down the field. A couple of times she even flew into the air to stop the ball.

They tried a different arrangement of Dean, Charlie and Jo versus Cas, Anna and Hannah. The boys were practically forgotten in the competition between the dragons, slightly in awe.

In the end, the three humans got tired out. They sat down to watch as the dragons played a game by themselves, and as it got darker, they began using their fire powers as well as speed and strength. The game turned into a kind of play battle, and Dean, Sam and Cas whooped and cheered when Jo shot a warning fireball at Anna who was on the opposition team. The dragons took the game into the air, and it looked amazing, breath-taking, magical, plain awe inspiring as the occasional fireballs lit up the pitch to show hints of shadows around large wings. But suddenly most of them stopped. Cas looked over to where the girls were looking and spotted Coach Abaddon near the changing rooms, looking furious. The only one left in the air was Charlie who was too busy scoring points to notice anything else. She span round in the air about to give a victory cheer for herself when she too dropped to the ground at the sight of her Coach, or her Āhiti.

Anna jogged over to Abaddon, jogged, not flew and started exchanging words with her. It was quiet enough for everyone to overhear them.

“I’m sorry, we were just having a bit of fun, there was no chance of anyone seeing us,” Anna tried to explain.

“Oh, a bit of fun?” Abaddon said venomously. She then switched to another language, Avestan Cas supposed. As they talked, Anna took on a more military stance, and they both glanced over at the three boys. The rest of the cheerleaders were still, listening carefully. Cas would’ve said the look on their faces was a kind of sad determination, but it was too dark to really see. Abaddon leant in to speak quietly into Anna’s ear for a second as they both glanced at Charlie and then they switched back to English for one final sentence. “You are not _human_.”

The Coach glanced at Charlie again, and then stalked off. She gave Cas the chills. They didn’t play another game after that.

On his way home, Cas couldn’t shake off the bad feeling he had. The venom in Abaddon’s voice when she’d said ‘human’. He wanted to speculate what this meant. Why had she been so angry about them showing their powers just to him, Sam and Dean? They’d seen them when they were on that quest. It didn’t make sense. But a mental barrier slid down in Cas’ head- he had promised never to mistrust the dragons. He didn’t want to get paranoid and do something he’d end up regretting, and he didn’t want to hurt Dean, especially now they’d started something special between them. But he couldn’t ignore the itchy feeling of suspicion. It felt like imminent danger.

The only thing to do was to try forget about the whole incident. Not allow himself to even think about it. Or maybe he’d just learn to ignore the prickling sense of danger. It would probably be a mix of the both.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi thank you all for your comments and kudos and just for simply reading so far, it means a lot to me :) I'm afraid I'm going to be going on holiday tomorrow so I won't be able to post for a week, so sorry :/ but yah, uh, see you then i guess for the last two chapters eh


	7. Camping, Smores and Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am back hi this is the penultimate chapter full of cheese and suspicion kinda like the rest of the fic um yes, thanku all for reading this far

“You free this weekend?” Dean asked Cas at lunch.

“Always,” Cas replied. Like he had a social life outside of Dean, Sam and a few of the cheerleaders.

“Ever been camping?”

“What?” Cas looked at him in confusion.

“I felt kinda bad saying we couldn’t go into the forest the other night,” Dean started, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. “So, I asked the dragons, and they said it’d be cool if we camped out there one night, with them there too obviously, but yeah, sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Cas confirmed.

So on Saturday night, the usual suspects were sat round a carefully contained camp fire, toasting smores. Dean had got the sticky substance all over his cheeks some how, and when Cas noticed, he leaned over unashamedly to suck it off Dean’s cheek, making Dean laugh, and then grab Cas for a sweet tasting kiss. On the other side of the camp fire, Anna was carefully and fondly feeding Jo.

“Pfft, I am _so_ fifth wheeling here guys,” Charlie said loudly.

“Sorry, do you want me to lick some smores off you to make you feel less lonely?” Dean offered, waving a stick dangerously close to her face.

“Get lost, Winchester. I’m not lonely, you know I’m fighting off the babes,” she said, batting the stick away and laughing.

“Yeah, who was the last one? Was it Gilda?” Jo asked.

“No, we parted ways. On good terms, of course.” Charlie paused to smile to herself. “But I have a hot date with Dorothy tomorrow.”

“Nice,” Dean said appreciatively.

The five of them just talked for a while, the conversation moving onto the future.

“I’m thinking I’ll go to college, maybe take a History course. I’m not really sure yet,” Cas said, not seeming too bothered. “What about you Dean?”

“Go with the flow, dude. But Sam’s going to the top. He’s gunna get to one of the top universities and study to become a lawyer,” Dean said, barely disguised pride shining through his voice. “Jo?”

“Erm, we can’t really have a future plan. Stick around, defend the town, eventually move to another, that’s about it,” she said simply, Anna nodding.

“What do you do about aging?” Cas asked.

“We kind of age in cycles, from around the equivalent of a ten year old, to around a thirty year old, and then we burn down, a bit like Fawkes in Harry Potter, but cooler and more painfully, back to ten year old bodies again. It’s cool, it’s fun.”

“Doesn’t it suck a bit going through school all those times,” Dean asked.

“Yeah.”

Charlie had remained quiet so far, but now she spoke up.

“I kind of want to be a comic book writer one day, I mean, still defend the town and everything, but it would just be awesome,” she said wistfully. Dean immediately started snorting and asking Charlie if she remembered the comic she drew in fifth grade with the half rabbit half person superhero whose arch nemesis was a sting ray. Castiel was distracted by Jo and Anna shooting glares at Charlie, then carefully changing their faces to amusement as Charlie filled in details about her childhood comic books. Before Cas could stop any suspicious thoughts, he worked it out. Charlie can’t have been with the dragons for very long. It made sense, she always seemed more human than the rest of them, and how many times had Cas caught the dragons shooting accusatory glares at her when she made mistakes or said too much.

Later that night, just to confirm his theory, Cas slipped a question into the conversation about whether Charlie was younger than Anna and Jo. The couple went quiet momentarily, and Charlie explained.

“The rest of the dragons have been going round in their pack for centuries, but they only found me around about 1895, a ten year old that had just burnt down a village ‘cause I had lost my dolly. I don’t remember much about it though,” Charlie said. She looked at her hands for a moment, like she was seeing something else, but shook it off, looking at Anna and Jo to fill in the details.

“Yeah, we don’t know what happened there. Āhiti Abaddon said that it wasn’t supposed to happen... I’m not sure, it was weird. It doesn’t matter now though, Charlie’s one of the team,” Jo said, a little bit too jovially.

“It’s like you’ve been with us forever,” Anna said, looking directly at Charlie. It could’ve been Cas’ overactive imagination, but he thought he saw Charlie shift uncomfortably before smiling and agreeing. That was when Cas blocked the thoughts again. He could feel his suspicions growing, and he couldn’t let that happen. He needed to distract himself.

“I am so tired, I think I’m gonna retire to our tent,” Cas said, stretching his arms and looking at Dean meaningfully. “Night Anna, Charlie, Jo, I’ve enjoyed the conversation tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.”

The three girls chorused a ‘g’night Cas’ as he made his way towards the tent. As he unzipped it he glanced over his shoulder to see if Dean was following, but he was still sat with the others. Cas mentally kicked himself, and huffily clambered into the tent to zip it shut again. He had been too subtle- or Dean was just oblivious. Now he could only lay here and wait for sleep to come to him, but he might not be able to bat away the bad thoughts. The thoughts of the anger in Jo’s eyes when Charlie said she wanted to draw comic books, like she was betraying the dragons by saying that. But it was more than that, it was like they had a more important mission, that Charlie was endangering by having other plans. It couldn’t just be protecting the town, they could do that easily without Charlie. But Cas didn’t want to go down that train of thought. He was not allowed to mistrust the dragons after they’d saved his life.

He took his shirt off, ready to clamber into his sleeping bag, grumbling under his breath when he heard a rustle of material behind him. He turned round to see Dean zipping the tent door closed behind him.

“Hi,” Dean murmured, grinning as he crawled towards Cas. Their tent was quite small, a cheap two man tent that Dean had found in his basement, and the height would only allow crouch-walking at best. Cas really didn’t mind, he thought as Dean crawled practically into Cas’ lap to kiss him.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Cas murmured back, their faces barely an inch apart.

Dean chuckled, eyes flickering between Cas’ lips and his eyes. “I got your oh-so-subtle message, I was just trying to make it less blatant that you- _we_ were ditching them to make out.” Dean punctuated his sentence with another deep kiss that left Cas slightly breathless.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to ditch them, I just-“ Cas lost track of his sentence as Dean’s hands found his hips, and he started pressing feather light kisses to Cas’ jawline.

“I’m just too damn irresistible, right?” Dean asked, leaning Cas back, so that now Cas was laid out on the sleeping bag with Dean hanging over him, now kissing down Cas’ neck.

Cas plunged his hands into Dean’s hair as Dean made his way to Cas’ nipples, gently grazing his teeth against them until they were super sensitive. Cas stifled a groan, and then grabbed at Dean’s shirt, signalling him to take it off.

Dean stripped it off quickly, then went back to work on Cas’ torso, until he was kissing just over the hemline of his jeans, where a faint trail of hair started downwards. This time Cas couldn’t stifle his groan, and Dean surged back up to cover Cas’ mouth.

When he took it off, Cas blushed, as he only just remembered they weren’t alone.

“Is it considered impolite to perform sexual activities a few feet away from your friends?” Cas asked, mostly joking. Dean smirked, but then tilted his head up as if he’d heard something. Suddenly, he was crawling towards the door of the tent and poking his head out. Cas leaned up on his elbows, curious as to what Dean was doing.

“Hell yeah, Charlie is the best bro ever,” Dean said, no longer murmuring.

“What?”

“I think Charlie got Jo and Anna to leave, to er, give us some privacy,” Dean clarified. “Me and Charlie have a bro agreement, and yeah. What does she say, I think it’s ‘if the tent’s arocking, don’t come aknocking.”

A smile grew on Cas’ face as understanding bloomed.

“So you can be as loud as you want, babe. In fact, I want to hear you scream,” Dean said huskily, and he was back on Cas, kissing down his torso again. By the time Dean got to Cas’ jeans, he could feel a stiff heat against him. Cas slowly cursed as Dean undid Cas’ jeans and dragged them down along with his undershorts. Cas’ hand went to Dean’s hair again and gently tangled in it as Dean’s lips found the head of Cas’ dick and began sucking at it. Cas couldn’t help but moan loudly at the warm heat. He could feel Dean smile as he took Cas’ dick further into his mouth and began bobbing up and down. Cas’ breaths became shorter and shorter, his moans louder and more desperate as he looked down and saw Dean stroking himself too. Dean looked so good, hair mussed up, cheeks red and panting. Cas couldn’t last any longer-

“Shit, Dean, I’m-“ Dean’s mouth came off Cas’ dick with an obscene popping sound and Cas came hard. Dean stroked himself faster till he came too, cursing softly then collapsing next to Cas on the sleeping bag. It was lucky Dean had brought a lot of tissues.

 

*-*-*

 

“Cas?” Dean said groggily. It must’ve been something like four in the morning.

“Crap, sorry I didn’t mean to wake you,” Cas murmured. He was unzipping the tent flap.

“Where you goin’?”

“Nowhere, I just wanted to look at the sky.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Such a hipster.”

“Am not.” There was no reply, so Cas assumed Dean had gone back to sleep. He put his pillow outside the tent so he could comfortably gaze at the sky. A few minutes later though, Dean joined him apparently properly awake now. Cas squeezed up so they could both hang their heads out of the tent. They didn’t say anything for a while, which allowed Cas to zone out.

The sky was awe inspiring on this night. There was an almost full moon, one that hung so large and iridescent in the sky that Cas could clearly see the ashes of their camp fire, the shapes of the other tents and the outline of the surrounding trees. The moonlight also reflected off the clouds that filled a lot of the sky. They slowly drifted across the sky, a dusty indigo colour to them. They were the kind of clouds that could be a painting, with all the shadows cast on them from the lights. Then there were the occasional glimpses of the stars. Out here in the forest, away from all the artificial light and electric, you could probably see millions of stars if the sky was clear. But on this night, Cas just caught mysterious glimpses of the glittering heaven, somehow making it even better.

“You like looking at stuff,” Dean finally said, breaking the silence.

“You’re not very articulate at 4:37 in the morning,” Cas stated, smiling at the sky.

“Who is?” Dean breathed a laugh. “I mean like- you were so into looking at the river on that date, and... and when we were in the cave, you couldn’t take your eyes off the shadows on the wall.”

It gave Cas slight butterflies in his stomach to know that Dean had been watching him, that he had noticed this thing about him, that he knew things about Cas that Cas hadn’t had to tell him.

“Yeah. I guess I mostly like the contrast of light and dark, and how you can make them look like different things in your head. It fascinates me, I feel like I could stare at it forever.”

“I can’t make them look like anything,” Dean complained a few moments later.

“Ok, see that small cloud over there?” Cas pointed up. He positioned his face cheek to cheek with Dean so they could follow the same line of sight. “The bit there looks like a smiley face.”

“A smiley face?” Dean scoffed. “I see it, but that’s not very imaginative.”

“I can actually kinda see a dove flying out of a grandfather’s clock over this way, but I thought I’d start you out on something easier,” Cas teased.

“Ah.”

They continued to look at the sky, at the clouds, and the shadows cast on them.

By the time the moon started giving way to the sunrise, Dean had spotted an Aston Martin DB5 and a dancing skeleton in the sky. He seemed quite proud of himself.

“I like the light and the dark,” Cas mumbled, sleepily. Dean was more awake than Cas now.

“Why?” Dean said, if only just to hear Cas’ deep sleep infused speech.

“S’like good and evil. And I want to be good.” Cas was about to drop off to sleep.

“You are good. Let’s get you inside so a snake doesn’t make a nest in your mouth or something,” said Dean, gently leading Cas’ mostly asleep body back inside the tent.

“You’re good Dean. I treasure you,” Cas murmured once he was in place. He didn’t open his eyes, just smiled. Dean kissed his forehead and sat back. He couldn’t help but think to himself, Cas isn’t just good, he is amazing. Dean was slightly taken aback at the strong feelings he had for the guy. But it felt right. Dean shook his head- too much romantic shit for half five in the morning. Time for coffee.


	8. Sun, Flames and Fire

There was an excited buzz through Sir Peter Nugent High, which was weird considering it was a Sunday and there were students in school. However this was voluntary. Most people’s end of year exams were over, so instead of studying, they were hanging around, waiting for the biggest football game of the academic year. Cas had been roped in by the football coach Bobby to put directions around the school, for the inevitable influx of proud relatives that evening. Dean would also be hanging round all day, so they had arranged to meet at around noon.

The day was so clear and warm that they decided to have a mini picnic on the grass behind the cafeteria. On a normal school day it would be packed, but today they had it all to themselves. They lead back on the slight hill in a companionable silence as they ate their sandwiches, shoulder to shoulder. Cas thought he could probably actually fall asleep right now he was so relaxed. That was until a shadow fell across them. It was Charlie, looking panicked and panting slightly as if she’d run all the way to them.

“Dean, Cas, you’re in danger, something’s going to happen,” she started, obviously shaken.

The sudden change in atmosphere slowed down the boys’ reaction. All day everything had been so relaxed and mellow, all Dean could say in response was-

“Ummmmm, huh?” Charlie’s let out a gasp.

“The dragons are gonna-“

“Outperform the football tonight!” Jo cut in. Her and Anna suddenly appeared either side of Charlie, also looking slightly out of breath.

“No way man, everyone’s here to see the football tonight,” Dean responded, easily slipping into the pre-game banter that he’d become accustom to between him and Jo. At least it was easier for him to respond to than Charlie’s bizarre panic. But as Cas was in neither teams, he didn’t concentrate on the banter. Instead he looked at Charlie who had gone very pale, sandwiched between Jo and Anna. Gears slowly started turning in his head, and he sat up.

“Charlie, what’s up?” Cas said, voice dipping with sincerity. Charlie looked back at Cas forlornly and shook her head slightly.

“Just hyped from our rehearsal, aren’t you Charlie?” Anna smiled, nudging her in the ribs.

“Yes, the routine tonight will blow you away,” Jo continued quickly, smiling even wider.

“I think Abaddon wanted us back now, so I guess we’ll see you guys tonight.” Anna and Jo smiled again, then skipped off, dragging Charlie with them.

“That was weird,” Cas began. “What do you think was wrong with Charlie?” The familiar feelings of paranoia were struggling through Cas’ barriers in his mind. He’d been fighting these instincts for so long, it was almost easy for him to be distracted by Dean’s groan.

“She’s probably just upset about Disney owning the rights to Star Wars or something. We only have,” here Dean checked his watch, “fifteen minutes left of this lunch break, and you should be kissing me right now”. Dean smirked up at Cas, who raised his eyebrows at the command.

Just as Cas was about to make a witty comeback, Dean surged up to kiss him, making Cas forget what he was about to say entirely. The kiss was soft and slow, leaving Cas’ mind completely blank apart from the flash of need for Dean to be all over him right that second.

As if Dean could read Cas’ mind, Dean flipped them over so that Dean was straddling Cas. He started kissing down his neck, as his hips dragged across Cas’ growing erection.

Cas dragged his hand down Dean’s chest, then slowly slipped his fingers under Dean’s waistband, causing him to close his eyes, the kisses to Cas’ collar bone becoming sloppier. It was only then that Cas actually remembered that they were in public, and anybody could walk past them at anytime. For a second he found the thought kind of sexy, but then his treacherous mind gave him the image of his History teacher Metatron seeing him like this, which made him withdraw his hand quickly from Dean’s boxers.

Dean groaned again, and looked up at Cas, pouting slightly.

“Maybe tonight,” Cas smirked, showing a hint of teeth predatorily. “If you win.”

“Fuck. I will win.”

*-*-*

Sam and Cas were sat near the front, on the end of a row. The small stadium was full of bustling people, and there was a completely electric atmosphere. The night was dark and slightly cold, in contrast to how the day had been, but in the stall, squished with hundreds of people and under the flood of artificial light, it felt like it could still be day.

A roar started through the crowd as fake smoke crept onto the field, and then the cheerleaders ran in to start their chant. The music was booming, and the squad got the whole crowd on their feet, crazy with excitement. Then the footballers ran onto the pitch and went through the player introductions and the coach’s handshakes, and then they were off on the whistle. Both teams were on game tonight, but Dean’s team just had an edge over the others, as their score went up. In a small break, Dean quickly searched the crowd for Sam and Cas, and waved excitedly at them, making them laugh.

Sam informed Cas that this was probably the biggest game in the history of the school, they’d never beat this team before, but were expected to tonight. Cas nodded enthusiastically, then got up to cheer with everyone else as their team scored again, the cheerleaders starting another chant.

Soon it was half time, and the college band started playing. The song sounded kind of familiar, like a score from a film perhaps, and it helped create a great atmosphere. The scores were very close, and everyone was ecstatic to find out who would win. Dean jogged over to join Sam and Cas for a while, smiling excitedly. Plumes of fire abruptly went off around the main entrance to the pitch as Dean was talking to his friends.

“Wow, I didn’t know that did that,” Dean yelled, above the sound of the crowd cheering. “Ash probably installed it yesterday, the pyromaniac.”

The band continued playing their dramatic music, as the lights changed over to their red tint that was usually reserved for concerts and drama productions. Again, fake smoke filled the field.

“Uh, are you supposed to be back on the pitch?” Sam asked Dean, looking slightly confused.

“No, I’ve still got at least ten minutes,” the cheerleaders ran onto the pitch. “Maybe this was the new routine that Jo was on about earlier.”

Something wasn’t sitting right with Cas. He had a bad feeling deep in his gut that was becoming harder to ignore. Even Dean seemed a bit on edge by the change to the routine of the game. Then he noticed Charlie wasn’t with them.

And then, it happened so fast. The lights and the music, the sound of the crowd screaming, it made it all more difficult to realise what was going on. What Cas thinks happened, was one of the cheerleaders was thrown into the air- Anna. But then she stayed in the air. She’d got her wings out. And then the rest of the team were joining her. The crowd was a loud mixture of emotions, screaming in excitement, shouting in confusion, yelling in anger at the contradiction of physics. And then the fire. It was harder to know what was happening after that, because someone must’ve accidentally whacked his head in their attempt to flee the flames that were coming from the dragons. There’s chaos, and Cas can’t really see anything thanks to the thick black smoke, making him want to hack up his lungs. It had all started so fast. He didn’t know where Dean and Sam were, logically they should be right next to him, but all he could feel was the burning heat. He wasn’t sure if he was next to the fire or in the fire anymore. But that was when someone grabbed him roughly, and abruptly, he was out of the fire. Charlie was protecting him, and as many other people as she could under the span of her wings, including Dean and Sam.

“We might just survive this,“ Charlie yelled to Cas, over the sound of screaming.

 

 

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The endddddd, thank you all for reading this it means a lot to me:)) comments and kudos and everything mean so so so much to me also and just yeah. I have plans for a sequel in my head but I'm not sure if I'll ever get round to writing it. If I did it would be apocalypse!boyfriends it would be great haha but yes thanks byeee


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